Greetings, my lovelies,

So far, this little post-birthday revelation has been rather lovely.

I’ve talked about Hestia showing up in the shower and asking what I intend to do with the rest of my life. I’ve talked about honor, integrity, intentional living, the Wheel of the Year, finding my own spiritual path, bringing color back into my world, and remembering there is more to life than darkness.

Beautiful. Inspirational. Very look at me having meaningful revelations at 56.

Then Winston peed on the area rug.

And apparently the goddesses, my own conscience, or whoever is running this particular personal-development seminar said, Excellent. Now let’s get to the part you’re not going to enjoy.

Because sometimes a turning point doesn’t arrive with candles, sacred fire, autumn leaves, and profound spiritual wisdom.

Sometimes it arrives in a puddle of dog pee.

Winston Made Me See Something I Didn’t Want to See

I was working and got stuck on a call, so I couldn’t get away when Winston needed to go outside. By the time I finally came out of my office for my very late break, he’d had an accident on the area rug.

Annoying? Absolutely.

Was it his fault? No.

He couldn’t hold it, and I couldn’t get away from work. Shit happens. Or, in this particular case, pee happens.

But it wasn’t the rug that stopped me.

It was Winston.

He was lying on the couch shaking like a leaf because he was scared of what I was going to do.

That hit me like a brick.

I looked at this little dog who knows me, lives with me, trusts me, and depends on me—and he was afraid of me. Not because I had done anything to him at that moment. I hadn’t even yelled. But apparently he had learned enough from my reactions at other times to expect it.

I didn’t like what that told me about myself.

Not one damn bit.

So I cleaned the rug, sprayed the Nature’s Miracle stuff that’s supposed to discourage repeat performances, and let him outside. When Winston and Kona came back in, I didn’t scream. I didn’t lose my temper. I didn’t turn an accident into World War III.

Then I sat with what I’d just seen.

That was considerably harder than cleaning the rug.

This Didn’t Start With Winston

I wish I could tell you I looked at Winston shaking and thought, Goodness, I’ve been slightly cranky lately.

No.

This goes much deeper than that.

For years, I’ve been carrying anger, bitterness, resentment, rage, and hurt. There have been legitimate reasons for many of those feelings. Life didn’t exactly hand me a scented candle and a spa certificate and tell me to take it easy.

There has been grief, trauma, fear, caregiving, loss, disappointment, and things that happened that I couldn’t control. There have been things I desperately wished I could undo.

Somewhere around 2021, something in me started changing. Instead of experiencing anger when something happened and eventually moving through it, I started living in it.

Bitterness moved in too. Resentment brought luggage. Rage apparently signed a lease.

Before I knew it, emotions that were supposed to visit had become permanent residents.

The really uncomfortable part is that I didn’t keep them neatly tucked away inside myself.

Other people lived with them too.

Ronnie Has Lived With It

This is the part where I could give you seventeen paragraphs explaining everything that has happened over the last several years and all the reasons I became angry.

I’m not going to do that.

Not because those things don’t matter. They do. But explanations and excuses are not the same thing.

Ronnie has been on the receiving end of my anger too. There have been times when he has tried to do the right thing by me and still seemed unsure how I would react. Times when he has walked on eggshells because he didn’t know which version of me he was going to get.

That’s painful to admit.

There are things in our history that hurt me deeply. There are things he is responsible for, things I am responsible for, and things neither of us could control. Marriage is rarely as simple as assigning one person the black hat and the other the white one.

But I cannot put everything at his feet.

That’s not honest.

If these posts are really about honor and integrity, then honesty has to apply when the truth makes me uncomfortable too.

For years, I’ve wanted things to be different. I’ve wanted to change my life. I’ve wished I could go backward and change things that can’t be changed. I’ve wanted to run away, leave everything behind, disappear somewhere new, and somehow outrun everything I was carrying.

Meanwhile, I was carrying it with me.

There’s the problem with running away from yourself.

You generally come along.

I Became Someone I Didn’t Recognize

This is difficult to write because I’m not looking for anyone to rescue me from my own words.

I’m not asking for a pity party. I’m not asking anyone to tell me, Oh Rae, you’re not like that.

I know who I have been.

I became vengeful, angry, bitter, and resentful. I screamed too much. I lost my temper too easily. I allowed old pain to influence new moments that sometimes had absolutely nothing to do with what originally hurt me.

At times, I became the worst version of myself.

I don’t say that because I hate myself. Actually, I think saying it is part of learning how to honor myself.

Honor isn’t pretending the ugly parts aren’t there. Integrity isn’t only telling the truth when the truth makes us look good.

If I hurt someone, I need to own that. If my behavior created fear or tension in my home, I need to own that too.

I can understand why I became angry without deciding that anger gave me permission to hurt everyone standing nearby.

Those are two different things.

My Personal Disaster Zone

This realization doesn’t stop with Ronnie or Winston.

There are friends, family members, readers, and other people who have occasionally found themselves standing in the path of Hurricane Rae while I was spinning at Category Five.

And yes, I know hurricanes don’t generally happen in Arizona.

Work with me here.

I’ve snapped. I’ve been defensive. I’ve been impatient. I’ve reacted before thinking. I’ve sometimes assumed the worst because I was already prepared for the next disappointment before anything had even happened.

Hell, I’ve lost my temper with ChatGPT.

More than once.

Imagine being so committed to irritation that you’re arguing with software.

That should probably have been a clue.

The people around me weren’t responsible for everything I was carrying, yet sometimes they caught the debris anyway.

I can’t go backward and retrieve every piece. I can’t unsay everything I’ve said, undo every reaction, or erase every moment when I wish I had behaved differently.

But I can stop throwing more debris.

I Owe Some People an Apology

There is something else I need to say, and I don’t want to bury it underneath explanations about what I’ve been through.

I’m sorry.

First and foremost, Ronnie, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for the times my anger landed on you when you didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry for the times you’ve tried to do something right and still had to wonder whether it would somehow be wrong. I’m sorry for the yelling, the impatience, the bitterness, and the times I’ve made you feel like you needed to walk on eggshells around me.

There are things we’ve both been through, things we’ve both done wrong, and wounds between us that belong to both of us. I’m not erasing any of that or pretending our history suddenly became simple. But this apology isn’t about what you did.

It’s about what I did.

I love you, and you should not have had to carry the weight of everything I was angry about simply because you were standing closest to me. Sometimes I honestly wonder how you stayed beside me through some of it. You did, though, and today I can see that differently than I could when I was buried underneath all that anger.

To my family, my friends, my readers, and anyone else who has caught pieces of my anger over these last several years, I’m sorry too. If I snapped at you, pushed you away, assumed the worst, became unnecessarily defensive, or made you feel like you had to carefully choose your words around me, I own that.

And to the animals who share this home with me—yes, you too.

Seeing Winston shaking on that couch was one of the hardest mirrors anyone could have held up to me. He couldn’t tell me what he was feeling with words.

He didn’t have to.

I saw it.

I’m not writing this because I want everyone to rush in and tell me, Oh, Rae, it’s okay. You’ve been through so much. I know what I’ve been through. Some of it hurt like hell, and some of it changed me.

Understanding where my anger came from matters, but it doesn’t erase what my anger did once I started handing it to other people.

So this isn’t a request for absolution. It’s an apology, and an apology doesn’t mean much if the behavior continues exactly as it did before.

I can’t promise Ronnie—or anyone else—that I’ll never get angry, never raise my voice, never have a bad day, or never say something I wish I could take back. I’m still human, and apparently the personality transplant wasn’t included with turning 56.

What I can promise is that I’m paying attention now.

I can stop sooner. I can apologize without adding a but. I can walk away when I need a minute. I can ask myself whether the person standing in front of me actually deserves the reaction they’re getting. I can stop making today’s people pay for yesterday’s pain.

Most importantly, I can show that I’m sorry by what I do next.

Ronnie, I love you. To my family, my friends, my readers, and the little creatures who trust me with their lives, I’m sorry. I intend to do better—not because I hate the woman I’ve been, but because I finally remember the woman I want to be.

I Can’t Remember the Last Time I Was Truly Happy

And then came the realization that hurt the most.

I asked myself a very simple question: When was the last time I was truly happy?

Not when did I laugh. I laugh all the time. Not when did I have a good day, enjoy dinner, take a trip, buy something fun, play a game, celebrate something, or have a wonderful moment.

I mean happy.

That deeper feeling of being content inside my own life.

I had to really think about it, and the closest answer I could come up with was somewhere around 2020 or 2021.

Shit.

Five years.

That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been happiness during those years. Of course there has. I’ve loved. I’ve laughed. I’ve celebrated. I’ve traveled. I’ve made memories and experienced beautiful things.

But somewhere underneath those moments, I was still carrying this enormous weight. I got so accustomed to carrying it that eventually I stopped noticing how heavy it had become.

Until I saw a little dog shaking on my couch.

This Is Where Honor Gets Real

Remember when I said I intend to live honorably?

Well, this is the part where that lovely word gets inconvenient.

It’s easy to talk about honor while discussing spiritual paths, goddesses, nature, the seasons, and beautiful intentions for the future.

Honor gets harder when it asks me to look in the mirror.

If I want peace in my home, I have to contribute peace to my home. If I want people and animals to feel safe with me, I have to behave like a safe person. If I want kindness, I have to give kindness. If I want understanding, I need to practice understanding.

And if I want that glow back—the happiness in my eyes, the lightness I remember, the feeling of genuinely enjoying my own life—I can’t keep feeding the emotions that have been extinguishing it.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never be angry again.

Please.

I’m from New Jersey.

Let’s keep our expectations within the realm of possibility.

Anger isn’t the enemy. Anger tells us something is wrong. Sometimes anger protects us. Sometimes it’s exactly the emotion we need.

But anger is supposed to tell me something, not run my household.

There’s a difference.

I Don’t Want to Punish Myself Either

Here’s where I have to be careful.

It would be incredibly easy to take this realization and turn it into another weapon against myself: Look what you’ve become. Look what you’ve done. You’re terrible. You ruined everything.

No.

That’s not accountability. That’s just another form of destruction.

Taking responsibility means looking honestly at my behavior, acknowledging where I’ve caused harm, making amends where I can, changing what needs to change, and behaving differently going forward.

Beating myself bloody with guilt doesn’t repair anything.

I can’t change yesterday.

I can change what I do today.

That’s where my responsibility lives.

So How Do I Fix It?

Not with one apology. Not with one blog post. And certainly not with a declaration that New Improved Rae has officially arrived and will henceforth react to every inconvenience with the serene wisdom of a Buddhist monk.

Again, Jersey.

This is going to happen in the small moments.

It’s going to be the next time something gets spilled, broken, forgotten, delayed, misunderstood, or peed on. It’s going to be stopping before I react and remembering that the person—or animal—in front of me is not every person who ever hurt me.

It’s going to be choosing which things actually deserve my energy, apologizing when I screw up instead of defending the screwup, and learning to laugh when something is ridiculous instead of treating every inconvenience like a personal attack from the cosmos.

And sometimes I’m going to fail spectacularly.

Then I’ll try again.

That’s the work.

Winston Got His Treat

And yes, in case anyone has been wondering since the beginning of this story, I gave the dogs their treats.

Because withholding a treat later wasn’t going to teach Winston some complicated moral lesson about peeing on the rug while I was trapped on a work call.

He wasn’t plotting against me.

He had to pee.

The rug survived.

More importantly, Winston eventually stopped shaking.

I would much rather have a dog who trusts me than a perfect rug.

That seems painfully obvious when I write it down.

Maybe that’s why I needed to write it down.

I Know What I Want Back

I want the woman who laughs easily.

I want the woman who can be sarcastic without being cruel, blunt without being vicious, strong without being constantly prepared for battle. I want my curiosity back, my ridiculousness, my softness, and my ability to get excited over stupid little things simply because they make me happy.

I want peace in my home, but I also want peace inside me.

Not fake peace. Not pretending everything is wonderful when it isn’t. Not swallowing my feelings or becoming afraid to speak because I might upset somebody.

That’s not me either.

I want the kind of peace that comes from knowing I can feel something without becoming it.

I can be angry without becoming anger. I can grieve without becoming grief. I can remember without living in the past. I can acknowledge what happened without allowing it to decide what happens next.

Maybe that’s what coming back toward the light actually means for me.

Not denying the darkness. Not pretending it never happened.

Walking out of it.

I visited. I learned some things. I said what I needed to say. It was an okay place to visit.

I’m not living there anymore.

I’m 56 years old, and I don’t want to spend whatever time I have left being angry about time I already lost.

That’s just losing it twice.

I cannot change the past. I cannot rewrite 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, or yesterday.

But I have today.

I have Ronnie. I have my animals. I have people I love and a home I want to fill with peace instead of tension. I have books I haven’t read, places I haven’t visited, things I haven’t created, holidays I haven’t celebrated yet, seasons I haven’t walked through, ridiculous things I haven’t laughed at, and mornings when I haven’t even had the coffee yet.

I still have a life to live.

Maybe the most honorable thing I can do now isn’t spend the rest of it punishing myself for the woman I became while I was hurting. Maybe it’s taking responsibility for the woman I choose to be next.

I saw something in Winston’s eyes today that I never want to see there again.

That was enough.

Not to make me hate myself.

To wake me the hell up.

And this time, I’m listening.